Timelapse in general

what is the best method of shooting time lapse stuff? what settings should the camera be at? and being HD, what would the file size end up being when I finally capture? it feels like an extremely tedious process, leaving the camera out somewhere for however long, and then having to capture it all afterwards, is there no easier way??? probably not, just wondering...thx

Depends on what you want to do.

Most of my time lapse clips are done with DSLR and P&S photo cameras, using either a laptop or a triggering device to shoot a frame every x seconds.

If I want to capture like 5 minutes and compress it to 30 seconds, I use the video cam and speed it up accordingly.

If your camcorder has interval recording set it for 30 second off and 0.5 sec recording. that will give you about 18 frames of video and all you need is one frame per segment. Yes it's a lot of work but the results are great.

wow awesome, can't wait to try it out thanks

For a 10 second timelapse clip it takes 300 clip segments using interval recording. Don't ask how long it took to record that many clips because I didn't keep track of the time.

If you have DV-footage (i.e. dv encoder as mov or avi), you can also speed it up with Dynapel Motion Perfect (50 USD). There is a free demo at www.goodervideo.com that includs a water sign.

I did e.g. this one
http://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/91937

with it. It sold a couple of days ago.

To obtain the best result, you select
-in the video compressor: uncompressed and 100% compression quality
-and for quality: mending (= frame interpolation) off

With respect to the timelapse factor you are theoretically only limited by the length of your source file. But check the result on TV to see how far you can go.

Note: seems the tool doesn´t open mjpeg or pjpeg clips. So for HD footage you would have to try it with uncompressed files, or do it the classical way with photos.

Stefgo

Try that with a flower opening it's petals early in the morning. I looked at your clip and I've done that 10 years ago and stil do it occasionally. If you have a camera with interval recording give it a try. It does requires a little time to edit and looks the same as if one used a still camera.

That´s why I am actually looking for a system of interval timer plus still cam like I have posted in "anoSSer" forum :). A high quality timelapse will aways be a photo timelapse.

In this clip, the main object are not the fine structures of a flower in close up, but the general rush of the traffic. That´s why I think you can do it. And don´t forget about the advantage to choose different timelapse factors if you got some let´s say 15-20 minutes of footage.

My cam doesn´t have interval recording, or I overlooked it in the manual.

What about shooting 1-2 minutes traffic and use software to do the timelapse? Is it a good way to do it? But I am sure quality of picture is much better than video quality?
I saw timelapse flower from Ulrich are wonderful...Gorgeous!! And I saw your clips on the other front page too. Congr...

You had better take more than 1 - 2 min. of video because it depends how fast you want to run the clip. If you have software play with it to see how much footage you need for say a 10 sec clip. What you are really doing to the clip is compressing it. With my software a clip is 100% if it is reduced to 50% we have slowmotion and the clip has increase in length. On the other hand timelapse is when you compress a clip say by 200% the clip becomes shorter in length and every thing starts moving faster.

Hope this helps you.